auren Haslem’s history honors thesiskept her up many nights with its morbidmaterial. She found herself staying late at thelibrary, wide awake, with her head buried inbooks containing eye-opening confessionsfrom American soldiers. She couldn’t stopreading as Vietnam veterans described howfriends and family members turned awayfrom the war footage on TV in fear anddisapproval, casting a dark cloud over thesoldiers’ heads.

“That part of the research was so
captivating because it documented
individuals navigating through dissonance in
real time,” says Haslem (BA 2015, History).
In her thesis, “Shifting Cultural Climates:
War and Mental Illness in Twentieth-Century
America,” Haslem examined the social
issues under the surface of war’s medical side
effects. Faculty members were drawn to
the quality of her analysis, awarding
Haslem’s research first place for the College
in the 2015 Undergraduate Research and
Poster Symposium.

Haslem examines the development and
treatment of war neuroses during World Wars
I and II, and the Vietnam War. She illustrates
the medical community’s shifts in thinking
throughout each conflict. In World War I,
psychiatrists considered “shell shock” a result
of physical exposure to combat coupled with a
weak mind. The focus on mental illness as an
inherent ailment continued into World War II,
with military psychiatrists screening soldiers
for susceptibility to neuroses.

LHaslem builds up to the idea that war neurosis has less to do with soldiers’ mental
makeup than the condition of the world
around them. Vietnam confirmed the notion
that this neurosis didn’t stem from abnormal
minds but from the otherworldly environment
of war and the changing climate of the world
soldiers called home.

“I think Lauren’s work reminds us that
medical understandings are situated in
social, cultural, and political contexts that
also shape the diagnosis and treatment of
disease. Lauren has situated her work in these
contexts to demonstrate how they evolve and
can change the post-conflict experiences
of trauma for soldiers,” says Yvonne Pitts,
associate professor of history and one of
Haslem’s advisors for the research.

Support for soldiers from the public
and political spheres during World Wars
I and II shaped their mental struggles as
a noble sacrifice. The vitriolic response to
Vietnam left those soldiers lost, untreated,
and suffering in silence, and demonstrates
“how subjective opinions influence objective
realities,” says Haslem.

Haslem, now a graduate student in the
Department of History, hopes people will
consider this idea both during and outside the
topic of war. It feels particularly relevant now,
she admits, as opinions about gun violence
and mental illness are debated across America
in the wake of recent shootings. “History has
an incredible way of forcing people to reflect
on the present,” says Haslem.